Highlander Enchanted(18)

“My lady, I am the healer. Laird Cade sent me to attend you,” she said with a heavy French lilt to her speech.

Isabel sat on the bench at the bottom of the bed and stretched out her leg. “I doubt there is much you can do,” she said.

“My skills are legendary here,” the healer said and knelt. “I can heal any wound or break.”

Isabel clasped her hands in her lap and watched.

The healer pushed her skirts up to her knee and touched her calf with cool fingers. Isabel hissed at the light touch.

“You are strong, my lady,” the healer said with a concerned smile. “This is broken. You should be in too much pain to walk.”

“If I have learnt anything, it is that women bear pain more quietly and more steadily than men,” Isabel responded.

The healer ducked her head to hide her smile. She lifted Isabel’s leg by the heel and moved it gently.

I am also accustomed to it. Pain radiated through her, but she said nothing, thoughts on the father who hit her as he plunged into madness and the betrothed who beat her out of anger.

“The break is clean and it has begun to set itself,” the healer reported and released her leg. She sat up and leaned forward to touch Isabel’s forehead. “You have a fever, albeit a light one. Black Cade was right. You need to rest.”

“Black Cade …” Isabel started to refuse and then clamped her jaws closed. It was unbefitting of her rank to belittle a laird to his servant. The fact she even considered it supported the healer’s claim that she was ill, for she would never be tempted to voice such words otherwise. “… is wise.”

“He has a sense for these things,” the healer said and rose. “He was meant to heal not kill, but it was not his fate.” She retrieved a satchel laying near the door and began to pull various poultices, herbs and jars from its depths.

Isabel cared little for the curiosity bubbling within her. She managed not to ask about the enigmatic laird. Her eyes went to the herbs and pendants dangling in the window, tossed about by a cool breeze.

“What are these charms?” she asked.

The healer glanced towards them then back at her, hesitating.

“They are beautiful,” she added.

“Talismans of sorts,” was the reply.

“Talisman? For what purpose?”

“It is said they hold magic,” the healer answered.

Isabel gasped. She looked once more around the chamber, and she noticed what was missing the first time she searched it. Of all the trappings in the room, there was no cross or bible.

“Your chieftain is a pagan?” she whispered.

“Yea, he is.”

She crossed herself. “Have you no priest to teach you of the one god?”

“We have a priest,” the healer said and knelt beside her once more. “He teaches us his ways, and we teach him ours.”

Isabel reached into her pocket to retrieve the sacrilegious pendant. She held it up before her eyes. “Magic does not exist,” she stated. “Those who speak of it are heathens.”

“This one spoke to you?” the healer asked.

“Of course not. But I found it charming, and it seems almost to glow.” By every divine law, she should burn the pendant, confess and wash herself until the taint of her sin was gone.

But her hand would not let it go, and her eyes were unable to lift from the tiny spark within the depths of the pink gem.

“This magic is for the heart,” the healer said and placed her hand beneath the dangling pendant. “If it speaks to you, you have known the kind of suffering that leaves no wounds.”

Isabel lowered the pendant, gaze riveted to the healer.

“The magic wants to help you. To heal you.”

“Magic is not real,” Isabel whispered.

“Perhaps in England. But in the Highlands, magic surrounds us, my lady. It is clear you came from elsewhere. You left your world behind, as I did many years ago. This world is unlike those we left.” The healer’s voice was warm, friendly. She worked on Isabel’s leg as she spoke, creating a sturdy brace around her calf and tying it in place with leather strips.

Isabel had heard tales – mainly from Aisla – of the magical creatures called seillie said to inhabit the wild northern lands and the magic they possessed. But these were fables similar to those told to her by her wet nurse when she was a child.

Still, some part of the healer’s speech touched her on a level that kept her from throwing the crystal away or ordering the heathen out. She was in a new world with people unlike any she had ever met. God was everywhere, for certain, but was it not also an insult to God to judge those who believed differently? Was that not His place, not hers?

What would Father Henry advise her to do when the heathens had shown her kindness and mercy?

He would claim their compassion came from God. She decided with little certainty.

“This will support you and protect your bones,” the healer said in satisfaction and sat back from her braced leg. “I have herbs for pain and poultice for your face.”

Isabel tested her leg. The brace was awkwardly heavy but not so much that she could not walk. The healer had smeared something on her leg as well, an oil by the gleam.

“Do you believe in magic?” she asked as the woman took her arm and began to examine her for bruising.